Italian lifers launch plea to be executed

HUNDREDS of inmates serving life sentences in Italy have written to the country's president asking to be executed, saying that would be preferable to rotting away in jail.

The plea came just as the Italian government is pushing for a global ban on capital punishment. Some 310 lifers made a public appeal to Giorgio Napolitano, the president, asking him to put an end to their misery.

"Dear President of the Republic, we are tired of dying a little each day," they wrote.

"We have decided to die only once; we ask that our life sentences be changed into the death penalty."

The death penalty is banned by all 27 European Union countries.

The EU has tasked Italy to draft a statement to be presented to the United Nations General Assembly, laying out the case for a global moratorium on capital punishment.

Human rights groups opposed to the death sentence believe it is inhumane and out-moded.

However, the Italian prisoners said living out the rest of their life in jail was even worse.

Carmelo Musumeci, 52, a convicted mobster who has been in prison for 17 years, wrote: "It's a death you drink sip by sip". The letter was signed by the other prisoners.

While such a request is unlikely to win much political support, it may fuel a debate in Italy over the morality of locking people away for life with no chance of being freed.

Maria Luisa Boccia, a left-wing senator, has presented a proposal to the Italian parliament that life sentences could be abolished in favour of fixed terms of around 30 years.

There are nearly 1,300 prisoners serving life sentences in Italy and about 200 of those have served more than 20 years behind bars.